The Blade Itself

Well-crafted but the plot and characters follow the genre standards. Abercrombie follows the new style of trying to break stereotype (the Vikingnorthman beserker is introspective, the torturer has been on both sides of his profession, etc.) but never manages to leave the awareness that a character is from central casting with an after-market upgrade and the effect comes off more as “Look how serious and modern I'm being compared with old cliched epic fantasy!” than an actual improvement.

I'm in favor of depicting violence as unpleasant rather than glorified but the author was inconsistent in this – while one character shows severe lasting effects in general you have the usual fantasy trope of people being some of the best fighters in the world rather than half-crippled from their past escapades. This works better in the high-magic fantasy worlds with freely available healing magic but clashes oddly with the attempt at a more realistic style.

That said, the world-building and writing are above-average quality and the story is entertaining, if not ground-breaking. I wouldn't spring for a hardcover but would definitely consider paperbacks the next time I'm heading to the airport particularly since this is Abercrombie's first book and I suspect subsequent efforts will benefit from increased experience.

This is the best recent fantasy story I've read in years. However, while it hearkens back to the grim earthiness and visceral action of the sword & sorcery tales I love, it perpetuates one of the most obnoxious trends in modern fantasy: the trilogy.

It was vehement criticism that attracted me to this book, oddly enough. Some fantasy fans seem to consider Joe Abercrombie the vanguard of a fantasy sub-genre they've dubbed "the new nihilism." His books are bad because they're morally ambiguous. His characters are flawed, often in very nasty ways. "Nobles" tend not to be. There's a lot of gore. Unlike a lot of recent fantasy, he presents a world that's ugly and stinks and people shit and sometimes die for very little reason at all. I read all this criticism and thought "Sign me up!"

The characters were great. He takes archetypes (a dashing noble, an uncultured barbarian with a rough code of honor) and subverts them. They have flaws. Not Hollywood flaws, superficial quirks, but some pretty massive defects. "They're not people I'd want to be in the same room with" seems to be a frequent complaint. I can understand that, I probably wouldn't SURVIVE being in the same room with them. But what they are is interesting, in a way that is unfortunately uncommon in a lot of recent fantasy.

The action--and there's a lot of it--was also pretty exhilarating. Visceral in the truest, chunkiest sense of the word. Combat is an ugly, desperate thing, and if it takes groin-kicking and eye-gouging to get our heroes through a fight, well, those are tactics they don't think twice about adopting.

However, while I was thoroughly engrossed by the characters, their exploits, and the presentation, I was still left vaguely disappointed by the end of the book. I considered knocking down my rating another star, but in the end I went with the higher rating because this book was such a rush to read. The biggest issue that this book has is that it's the first volume of a trilogy. For marketing reasons, fantasy publishers just love trilogies, so everything has to be drawn out into several installments. I enjoy revisiting interesting characters and settings for further adventures, but it's disappointing when a book fails to stand on its own. This volume is a third of the story. The plot is basically introducing the characters and getting them in position, and while I loved the ride, it bothered me when I realized that this was 530 pages of Abercrombie taking out the pieces and setting up the chess board. It's clear that he's headed in an awesome direction, and the author has earned enough of my trust for me to add the rest of his work to my to-buy list, but it's disappointing that this book wasn't more self-contained.

Still, my primary objection is something that probably doesn't bother most fantasy readers. I'd recommend this for fans of George R.R. Martin, David Gemmell (the closest example I can think of), and Robert E. Howard. (If only Abercrombie had Howard's ability to tell epic tales succinctly!) If you like clean-smelling fantasy with honor and romance, you're going to have a bad time.

First: I didn't finish this book. Now, for me, this is very unusual. Most of the time I give a book a fair chance, and want to judge it only after I read all of it. But not this one. These days, I have limited time to read, and so what I read better be entertaining for me. Or gets shelved again.

I liked Glokta. Well, a bit. You can say he was my favorite character. Had the most depth. Which was relative in this book. I always root for the quasi-bad-guy, so that was easy. I liked how Glokta thought about his work (a torturer/inquisitor), how he used to be a golden boy, but got maimed and crippled by torture, returned, and decided to deal out his share of truthfinding.

Logen Ninefingers started pretty good early in the story... and diminished into a strangely uninteresting 'barbarian ruffian with a heart of goldish' kind of person. He just faded out. No real action, no real fighting, certainly no doubt or angst or uncertainty. Wallpaper. Perhaps he'll get fleshed out more in the 25% I didn't read.

Bayaz was funny and had some potential, but screeeeeamed 'stereotypical enigmatic fantasy wizard' to me. Which I dislike.

All through the barbarian-crew sections I kept seeing [a:Terry Pratchett|1654|Terry Pratchett|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1235562205p2/1654.jpg]s Cohen the Barbarian and The Silver Horde. I love them, but these (I even already forgot their names) were bland. No life.

Maybe I'll try this book later. Maybe soon. But I want to spend my precious time reading books that make me want to know what's going to happen, books that keep me from putting them down. I want to care for the characters, or at least have a strong feeling about them. This book doesn't do that.

An outstanding debut novel and start to a trilogy. Abercrombie does a wonderful job of introducing all of the complex characters and manages to make them all fascinating in their own right, although every reader may favor some more than others. In my case, I am particularly captivated by both Logan, the practical barbarian that is haunted with regret, and Glotka, the crippled torturer and inquisitor.

Abercrombie is also very effective at introducing the reader to his world, without much tedious exposition, which is a welcome change from a lot of other epic-fantasy. He also clearly illustrates what is at stake and carefully sets the events in motion that one assumes will drive the course of the story in the next two books.

I do have one complaint, and that is that occasionally Abercrombie starts a chapter without clearly telling you which character's point of view the narrative is being told through, which can be a bit confusing. Usually, you can tell just from the voice of text, which is quite an accomplishment on the author's part, but occasionally I would encounter a chapter and it would take me half a page to orient myself, which is the only reason I'm knocking off one star.

I can easily seeing this book joining the likes of Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire and Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicles as one of my favorite epic fantasy series produced recently, and I can't wait to start on the next book in The First Law series.